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ALLIE FLOATED BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUSNESS, REALITY and unreality. Sometimes she was almost fully alert and knew that she was drugged and lying in a hospital room, hooked to an IV and a battery of monitors. But most of the time she was elsewhere.

The faces came and went. Sometimes they crowded around her—Mom, Dad, Connor, Trudi, strangers with white coats and nameplates, the torturer in the ski mask. Other times they left her utterly alone and she felt she was the only one left in the world.

The pain, though, was always with her. Mostly it was a dull buzz in her head and left arm that troubled her sleep and never let her get quite comfortable. But if she moved too quickly or bumped her arm against something, it would come in great blinding jags that made her cry out.

Her dreams were vivid, and many of them involved interrogation. In one, she was back in the chair at Deep Seven and the two men—one with a mask and one without—were pounding her with questions in some foreign language, and then pounding her with their fists when she couldn’t answer. Another time, she sat in a conference room at Doyle & Brown and Connor talked to her. She couldn’t follow what he was saying, but she knew it must have something to do with her lies. His eyes were like golden-brown lasers that physically hurt her. She couldn’t find a way to answer him, just apologize over and over as his eyes burned into her.

But the worst—and most vivid—dream involved Mom and Dad. They sat beside her bed, looking at her with loving, worried faces. Sometimes she saw Mom’s face and sometimes she saw Dad’s, but she always heard Mom’s voice. Their questions weren’t harsh or judgmental, just hurt and uncomprehending—and that made them worst of all. How had she gotten into trouble like this? Why hadn’t she said something? How had all this happened?

Unlike in her other dreams, Allie answered them. The words poured out of her, gushing out through a broken dam in the depths of her soul. Old, stagnant words, kept bottled up too long. Sharp-edged questions of her own that had cut her like broken glass whenever she touched them over the years.

Why did Dad give her the awful secret of his death? Why did he make her lie? Those were his last words to her, to anyone. She was the one driving that night. Why couldn’t she just say so and let the hurt out? Why? But no, Dad made her lock that secret away in a box. Was it any surprise that she learned to push other painful things into that same box? That was Dad’s last lesson. Was it her fault that she learned it too well?

But then Connor was standing there looking at her like she was sewage and telling her it was her fault. That was so unfair. And it was even more unfair that he was right.

So she tried to fix things, but they kept getting more broken. And Jason Tompkins was still dead. And Dad was still dead. And… and…

She was crying then, babbling meaningless sounds. Mom’s voice was crying with her. Finally, she slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Allie awoke—really awoke—for the first time early on a sunny morning. Fresh light slanted in through three windows and cast wide, bright rectangles across her bed, the sturdy guest furniture around it… and Mom. She lay in a recliner with a hospital blanket over her, snoring softly. Her faded blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail and the top of a Cal Berkeley sweatshirt (a gift from Allie) was visible over the top of the blanket. She looked younger—sleep had smoothed away many of the care lines on her face.

Allie sat up—and instantly regretted it. Sharp pain knifed through her head and left arm. She gasped, which gave her a coughing fit. And that, of course, just made her head hurt more.

Mom opened her tired blue eyes. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Just lie down. The nurse will be here in a minute. She pushed a button on a small box attached to a thick white cord. “I’m here. Mom’s here. Everything is all right.” She got up and walked over to the bed, hands held out.

Allie gingerly lay down again. “Hey, Mom. It’s good to see you.” Her mouth tasted like sour cotton. “Could I get some water? Maybe a cup of coffee too? Black.”

The door opened and a thin Asian woman in a white uniform walked in carrying a clipboard. She looked at Allie and smiled. “Good morning.” She glanced over at Mom. “Morning, Sandy.”

The nurse looked back at Allie. “How do you feel?”

“Like I got hit by a truck. And I could really use a cup of coffee and some water.”

The nurse laughed with grating perkiness. “Well, it sounds like you’re back with us. Let me just ask you a few questions. What’s your full name?”

“Allison Christine Whitman.”

“Very good. Where are you?”

Allie looked around. “Beats me. Looks like a hospital room.”

Nurse Perky gave Allie an approving smile. “That’s right! Two for two. Now for the last one: who’s that over there?” She pointed at Allie’s mother.

“That’s my mom. Her name is Sandra Whitman.”

“Excellent! Doctor Andrews was hoping you’d start making more sense if we reduced your medication levels. He’ll be in to talk to you on his morning rounds.” Nurse Perky glanced at the monitors by Allie’s bed and jotted something on the clipboard. She looked up and flashed another smile at Allie and her mom. “Bye.”

“Can I get some coffee?”

But she was gone.

Mom folded her blanket and hung it over the back of her chair. “I’ll get you a cup, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

While she was gone, Allie collected her thoughts. She remembered going to Deep Seven, meeting Ed and Mitch, calling 911, and then getting caught. After that, things got patchy and jumbled. She recalled men questioning and hurting her. Then there had been an explosion and fire. That all made some sense, but she also remembered seeing Connor’s plane, which made no sense at all. And her mind held dim images of him interrogating her too. Dad had been there too, and— An uneasy thought crept into her mind. What had Nurse Perky said about her making sense now? What exactly had she said while drugged?

Mom walked back in carrying two steaming paper cups. She handed one to Allie. “There you go, honey.”

“Mom, I was wondering, um… Well, have you been here for a while?”

She nodded. “Mr. Clayton called me three days ago, and I got here as soon as I could. I’ve been in your room ever since.”

“Did I— was I talking?”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. You had a lot to say, but most of it didn’t make any sense. You also talked to people who weren’t here. The doctor said the medication and your injuries made you confused. It was almost like you were half asleep, half awake.”

Allie twisted her sheet in her right hand and looked down. “Did I talk about Dad?”

“You did.”

Allie looked up at Mom’s face. The care lines were back, deeper than ever. She looked exhausted. “What did I say?” “You said a lot of things.” She pressed her lips into a thin, pale line for a moment.

“You said that he made you lie. You said you… you said something about his death.”

“That it was my fault?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Yes.”

Allie gulped her coffee, as if the hot liquid would make it easier to speak. It merely scalded her mouth and throat.

She coughed and took a deep breath. “It was my fault. I was driving.”

There. It was out there. It was finally, finally out there. After all these years, the truth sat out in the open like a boulder that she had finally dropped from her shoulders. But would that boulder forever block the path that connected her and Mom?

Mom stared at Allie for several seconds, her mild eyes filled with pain. She pinched them shut. “Oh, Allie. You’ve carried that all these years.”

Mom bowed her head, and Allie could see tears falling into her lap.

Allie felt her own eyes fill and her throat swell. “Dad made me promise not to tell you. He said you wouldn’t understand. He wanted me to blame him, so I did and… and…” Her words dissolved into sobs.

“He was trying to protect you.”

She nodded and buried her face in her sheets. Waves of agony swept over her. This was like having surgery done on her soul with no anesthetic.

“Allie, who is Jason Tompkins?”

She looked up and saw the reproach and fear in her mother’s face. “I talked about him too?”

Mom nodded.

Allie took another sip of her coffee to calm herself. “Mom, there are some other things you should know. Actually, there are a lot of things.”

For the next hour, Allie talked and her mother listened. Mom stopped crying but didn’t otherwise react. She just sat there and absorbed what her daughter was saying with a blank look.

Allie filled in all the secret gaps in her life: Erik’s meth use, Jason Tompkins’s death, Blue Sea’s blackmail, her fraud at Deep Seven, why she ran away, why she came back. Everything.

Then she reached the end and fell silent. It had been surprisingly easy. Once the first big confession was out, it was as if the cork was out of the bottle. She could pour it all out, and she had. Now she felt empty.

The two women sat quietly. The monitor beside the bed beeped softly and a bird sang outside the window.

Allie drained the cold dregs of her coffee. Awful stuff, even for a hospital. “I suppose you hate me now. It’s okay—pretty much everyone I know hates me. I even hate me. I deserve it.”

Mom reached over and took her hand where it lay on the damp sheet. “Oh, Allie. I don’t hate you. I love you, sweetheart. I just… it’s as if you’ve been a complete stranger and I just found out about it. I, I don’t quite know what to think. But I don’t hate you.” She smiled and patted Allie’s hand. “And I don’t think that Mr. Norman hates you either. He’s been in here every day for at least an hour.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. We had some good conversations about you.”

“What did—”

A sharp knock at the door interrupted her. Nurse Perky was back, and she had brought an equally chipper doctor with her. “Well, I understand you’re feeling better, Allison.”

She thought for a moment. “You know, I think I am.”